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There have been a few users who have documented that they are being capped at ~37.6Mb/s (4.7MB/s) on a 100Mb/s (12.5MB/s) connection, regardless of the node they connect to. In order to build a picture of the performance available to network members, I've created this thread so we can collate experiences.

Guidelines/Rules

We are trying to build an accurate picture of real world throughput, so here are some rules.

1. (Obvious) Minimise the volume of other network traffic on your connection for the duration of the test.2.DO NOT use speedtest.net. Since we're trying to measure real world throughput, please use a real world application, such as a web browser doing an HTTP download, BitTorrent client, FTP client (FileZilla) or even curl or wget.3. Where possible, try to use the node which is geographically closest to you. Technically, with fast enough (and few enough) inter-links this should make no difference, but reality is a different story.4. Again where possible, use the source file (see below) which is geographically closest to you.

download manager app can hit speeds of 1000kb/s to 1100kb/s and stay at that speed, if I connect to other exit nodes

torrent client can max out and stay at 1100kb/s on other exit nodes

I tried connecting via random UDP port (65501); the only difference I noticed was crisper and quicker webpage retrieval and response/reload

NOTE: download manager app and torrent client can thrash speed up to 1300kb/s, but this is detrimental to my internet connection... it causes dropouts and disconnections. So I introduced a throttle limit @ 1100kb/s

Frankfurt seems to have difficulties connecting to peers when using public torrents, private tracker no problem other than speed being quite modest 6-7MB/s.
With Frankfurt Linhost test file 1000MB from netherlands worked quite well at 8.5-9.0MB/s

And the same file with London is steadily at 3.9MB/s for the whole download, the torrent never went past 70KB/s.

Without CS my torrent speeds were 9MB/s and the linhost test file 10MB/s.

I still remain hopeful that there's some solution to this, or at least a good explanation.

Thanks for that. Also, something else came to mind: some of the exit nodes have 100Mb/s network interfaces, rather than 1Gb/s interfaces. The cap you're seeing on the London node may be a result of that (or perhaps something else). I'll have to poke staff to see which nodes have which interfaces.

OpenVPN cpu utilization on the Alix hovered around 45% during the download. The previous test was done on a Mac running Yosemite.

I'll also try tearing down the Cryptostorm OpenVPN tunnel on the router and connect directly from both Windows and Mac systems using the current Narwhal widget and Viscosity respectively, to see what kind of results I get.

Last edited by sysfu on Wed Jun 10, 2015 10:08 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I have a 152Mbps connection at home although it peaks short of 120Mbps IRL. While I'm connected via CStorm I see a top speed of around 50Mbps. The average speed for torrents is around 2.4MiB/s (unchanged from before my connection upgrade) and for regular files I've seen it peak at around 4MiB/s. I've been messaging through Twitter since it's seen as an edge case, difficult to tune my OS since Windows makes it hard to.

I've had to switch to a wired connection, with a 20ft Ethernet cable, because my wireless adapters either drop after 5 minutes or cause Windows to malfunction. On torrents I see ~5MiB/s for download and for regular files it's ~6MiB/s. The highest speed I can achieve on a naked connection is ~14MiB/s.

One core bouncing around between 9-25% on the openvpn process. (i7-2600k, no overclock)

Well, 25% load tells me the issue certainly isn't at your end. I'm beginning to wonder if the issue is the OpenVPN process itself, or maybe further down the networking stack? Considering the fact that Linux-based routers are capable of throughput far greater than 50Mbit/s - combined with the fact that CS' exit nodes are full-blown x86 servers - I'd say the throughput issue lies with OpenVPN itself

2.DO NOT use speedtest.net. Since we're trying to measure real world throughput, please use a real world application, such as a web browser doing an HTTP download, BitTorrent client, FTP client (FileZilla) or even curl or wget.

My tradeoff for using CS is almost 90% of my bandwidth. My usually 100mbit up/down is reduced to 10~12mbit. Fortunately I only have to endure this during internet browsing as I outsource my heavy torrenting to a seedbox. But it still becomes noticable when trying to watch yt videos in 1440p or download something larger than a few megs.

It looks like I am being hit the hardest here, does anyone have optimalisation tips? Should I just hope for a server cluster in my country?

I'm using the cryptostorm widget on my 64bit windows machine with an i7 2630QM. The cpu usage is insignificant. I'm pretty sure the bottleneck is not on my part. PIA gave me speeds at around 95% of my native bandwidth. Ive tried every server cluster by now and I havent been able to utilize more than 15% of my 100mbit connection yet.

Would it be possible for you to conduct a couple of tests using the links at the top of the page? Basically, connect to an exit node closest to your location, then pick a file source for Linux Mint which is also closest to your location - so for example if you are in Germany, you would use the Frankfurt exit node and download the ISO from this link.

If you could report back with the results of a couple of runs, it would be appreciated.

I definitely want to help out; couple questions. Why do we avoid speedtest.net? Probably because it's a bursty test, rather than an average or median test?

Are there any particular software to track this on the user end? I know uTorrent has a sort of speed tracker over the download portion of a torrent, but outside of torrents?

Currently using the eyeball method while watching an HTTP download from a mirror.

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Speeds seem to hover in the 100-250KB/sec range, jumping up and down every so often.

Test 2: Same mirror (Univ of OK)

Speeds as low as 5.5KB/sec, almost never getting higher than 60KB/sec

Talk about stress-test, huh?

Same download setup as before, just different node.

Made DI.FM stream drop out repeatedly, while also affecting the download speed of the ISO

Disconnecting from CS, I see that same download, from the same mirror, it's superluminal; pegging the connection at 2.5-3.6MB/sec (hovering at 2.8-3.4MB/sec). This information is to help the network, so please don't take it as a detrimental post I've created here. Not sure the exact setup for connectivity at the node, within your kernels, etc. Just for point of reference.

Will update with additional information as I run tests (torrents, different nodes, different mirrors)

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I spent lots of time running tests and have generated a ton of data. Here it is:

All tests were done within about 30 minutes of each other using wget with five different servers and three different hosting providers. All were done from GNU/Linux. I am physically located on the eastern side of the United States.

Softlayer - Dallas US:

Not Connected to CS: 29.2MB/s

US Central: 3.03MB/s

US West: 1.2MB/s

Montreal: 6.90MB/s

London: 7.23MB/s

Switzerland: 1.04MB/s

Softlayer - Seattle US:

Not Connected to CS: 20.3MB/s

US Central: 2.17MB/s

US West: 2.11MB/s

Montreal: 7.64MB/s

London: 5.85MB/s

Switzerland: 1019KB/s

Softlayer - Amsterdam NL:

Not Connected to CS: 19.0MB/s

US Central: 2.52MB/s

US West: 632KB/s

Montreal: 4.6MB/s

London: 10.8MB/s

Switzerland: 1.2MB/s

Linode - Atlanta US:

Not Connected to CS: 24.3MB/s

US Central: 1.78MB/s

US West: 1.74MB/s

Montreal: 5.47MB/s

London: 7.01MB/s

Switzerland: 434KB/s

DigitalOcean - New York US (A VPS that I spun up just to experiment):

Not Connected to CS: 28.3MB/s

US Central: 1.73MB/s

US West: 1.67MB/s

Montreal: 5.84MB/s

London: 5.97MB/s

Switzerland: 230KB/s

Some conclusions that I can draw from this is that the fastest node for me is either Montreal or London, while the node that's actually closest to me is one of the slowest (uscentral). This is consistent with other observations I have made in the past, for example being unable to stream 1080p Youtube when connected to US nodes.

Many thanks for posting your experiences in this thread. It would appear that routing across the United States is awful, at least for the routes used by the datacentres where Cryptostorm nodes are located. The paths to Switzerland aren't too hot either, by all accounts.

Re: speedtest.net, yes it's bursty, also browsers running a speed test written in Flash(!) aren't the most reliable things in the world. File transfer software such as FileZilla or wget (for the 'nix heads out there) gives far more accurate results.

Can't seem to edit my post above, but this is Test 3, connected to London - England node.

Test 3: Univ of Kent UK (geographically close to London node (I assume))

Speeds don't seem to drop as low as previous US-central node

Speeds from 75KB/sec to 1.5MB/sec; mostly seem to fluctuate in the 150 ~ 450KB/sec range

Prolonged idle (reading a single page of something) seems to give download a bit of a boost; observed increases between 600KB/s to 750KB/sec, several bursts 30~40 second to 1.3 - 1.5MB/sec

Same download setup as before, just different node.

DI.FM stream didn't skip a beat (har har!) during download

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So with the new nodes and replacement nodes up and running, and using gigabit pipes, do we want to retest some of them?

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Hm...My connection is rated about 25/5, and I've regularly seen speeds around 31/7, so I'll give this a couple test downloads soon.

I'll try to keep similar format as before (again borrowing marzametal's format).

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This test site was suggested in IRC, and it looks like it's not Flash-based. Also, has an adjustable long-term speed testing method. Currently testing it out without CS to see how it fares.

Will obviously do some stress testing and compare to CS as well.

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Not really using all bandwidth available to me without CS VPN running, but definitely getting better!

No DI.FM streaming this time

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Managed a new record today, I wasn't even paying attention when I heard the fans of my device go on and checked to see what was going on. To my surprise, I was uploading at quite a nice speed, around 75 Mbps.

New day, new record (Switzerland server): 13.26 MB/s equates to over 100 Mbit/s (106 to be precise). This is on a 200 Mbit/s line if I'm not mistaken. My ISP gave me 100 Mbit/s before but I think it has been upgraded in the meantime.

I ran several tests from Charlotte, NC and got pretty good results on a
300Mbps cable connection routed over 802.11ac to the client
I normally get 150-200Mbps wifi speeds, so pulling 100Mbps on speedtest over VPN is pretty damn fast

large file wget download results:
(connected to the std. US East connection)

How connection is being made: Duplex FTTB 25Mb/25Mb cable with cheap TP-LINK router (very stable commection. Ping between three local cities is only 9ms).Exit nodes: Using Swiss and German exit nodes for testing.OS: Windows 7.

Just messin' around, and used DSLReports speed test! 60s test time, 32 download/upload streams (not sure how this affects the test).

I believe this was connected to the US North or US East node cluster....

My speed tier is 200mbps down, 10mbps up. Using an Arris SB6190 with the Puma6 issues.

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Nice to see that the upstream throughput is inline with your "naked" package performance. Assuming the VPN connection starts on your PC, the downstream throughput could possibly point to congestion on that node.

Ironically, while the newer ECC cryptographic algorithms are much more efficient than the older RSA - requiring much less CPU power for the same level of cryptographic strength - there's a good chance that the older routers (which would actually benefit from this) will never be updated to take advantage of it.